Valeria (gens)

"Valerius" redirects here. For other uses, see Valerius (disambiguation).

The Gens Valeria was a patrician family at Rome, which later included a number of plebeian branches. The Valeria gens was one of the most ancient and most celebrated at Rome; and no other Roman gens was distinguished for so long a period, although a few others, such as the Cornelia gens, produced a greater number of illustrious men. Publius Valerius, afterwards surnamed Poplicola or Publicola, played a distinguished part in the story of the expulsion of the Kings, and was elected consul in the first year of the Republic, BC 509. From this time forward, down to the latest period of the Empire, for nearly a thousand years, the name Valerius occurs more or less frequently in the Fasti, and it was borne by the emperors Maximinus, Maximianus, Maxentius, Diocletian, Constantius, Constantine the Great, and others.[1]

The Valeria gens enjoyed extraordinary honours and privileges at Rome. Their house at the bottom of the Velia was the only one in Rome of which the doors were allowed to open back into the street.[2][3] In the Circus Maximus a conspicuous place was set apart for them, where a small throne was erected, an honour of which there was no other example among the Romans.[4] They were also allowed to bury their dead within the walls, a privilege which was also granted to some other gentes; and when they had exchanged the older custom of interment for that of burning the corpse, although they did not light the funeral pile on their burying-ground, the bier was set down there, as a symbolical way of preserving their right.[1][5][6]

Niebuhr, who mentions these distinctions, conjectures that among the gradual changes of the constitution from a monarchy to an aristocracy, the Valeria gens for a time possessed the right that one of its members should exercise the kingly power for the Tities, to which tribe the Valerii must have belonged, as their Sabine origin indicates;[7] but on this point, as on many others in early Roman history, it is impossible to come to any certainty. The Valerii in early times were always foremost in advocating the rights of the plebeians, and the laws which they proposed at various times were the great charters of the liberties of the second order.[1][8]

Origin

The Valerii are universally admitted to have been of Sabine origin, and their ancestor, Volesus or Volusus, is said to have settled at Rome with Titus Tatius. Publius Valerius Poplicola and his brothers, Marcus Valerius Volusus and Manius Valerius Maximus, were descendants of this Volesus.[1][9][10] The nomen Valerius is a patronymic surname derived from the praenomen Volesus, itself derived from valere, to be strong.[11][12]

Praenomina

The earliest of the Valerii known to history bore the praenomen Volesus. Other praenomina favoured by the early Valerii included Publius, Marcus, Manius, and Lucius.[1]

Branches and cognomina

The Valeria gens was divided into various families under the Republic, the names of which are Corvus or Corvinus, Falto, Flaccus, Laevinus, Maximus, Messalla, Potitus, Poplicola or Publicola, Tappo, Triarius, and Volusus. Besides these, we meet with other cognomens of the Valerii under the Republic, which are mostly the names of freedmen or clients of the Valeria gens. On the coins of the Valerii, we find the cognomens Acisculus, Catullus, Flaccus, and Barbatus. Other surnames were borne by the Valerii in the imperial period.[1]

The Valerii Poplicolae were descended from Publius Valerius, the consul of 509 BC. His brothers, Marcus and Manius, bore their father's praenomen, in the form Volusus, as a surname. Manius bore the additional cognomen Maximus, which was passed down to his descendants.[1]

Poplicola signified "one who courts the people," from populus and colo, thus "a friend of the people." The form Poplicola was the most ancient. Poplicola generally occurs in inscriptions, but we also find Poplicula.[13] Publicola was the more modern form, and seems to have been the one usually employed by the Romans in later times. We find it in the best manuscripts of Livy, and in the palimpsest manuscript of Cicero's De Republica.[1]

The Valerii Potiti appear to be descended from Lucius Valerius, a son of Marcus Valerius Volusus, and nephew of Poplicola. This family, like many of the other ancient Roman families, disappears about the time of the Samnite Wars; but the name was revived at a later period by the Valeria gens as a praenomen; a Potitus Valerius Messalla was consul suffectus in BC 29. The practice of using extinct family names as praenomina was common in other gentes; in the Cornelia gens, the Lentuli adopted the extinct cognomen of Cossus as a praenomen.[1]

Corvus or Corvinus was a surname borne by a family of the Valerii Maximi. The first of this family earned the cognomen during the war against the Gauls in BC 349, when he defeated a giant Gaul in single combat, with the help of a raven. Marcus Valerius Corvus was regarded as one of the great heroes of the Republic, and was twice dictator, six times consul, and had filled the curule chair twenty-one times, living to the age of one hundred. He seems to have used the form Corvus, although some writers call him Corvinus; his descendants invariably adopted the form Corvinus, which is merely a longer form of Corvus.[1]

The surname Messalla was originally assumed by Manius Valerius Maximus Corvinus after his relief of Messana in Sicily from blockade by the Carthaginians in the second year of the First Punic War, BC 263. Members of this family appear for the first time on the consular Fasti in BC 263, and for the last in AD 506; and, during this period of nearly eight centuries, they held twenty-two consulships and three censorships. The cognomen Messalla, frequently written Messala, was originally an agnomen, meaning "of Messana." It appears with the agnomens Barbatus, Niger, and Rufus.

The cognomen Lactuca, borne by one of the Valerii Maximi, means "Lettuce," a favourite esculant of the early Romans. It belongs to the same class of surnames as Cicer (Cicero) and Stolo in the Licinian family.[14][15][16][17] Lactucinus, borne by some of his descendants, is merely a longer form of the same name.

The name of Valerius Laevinus first appears in the Fasti for BC 280, and the family was still extant in the age of Augustus, and that of Domitian or Nerva. A Laevina is mentioned by Martial.[18][19]

Members

Valerii Poplicolae

Valerii Potiti

Valerii Maximi

Valerii Messallae

Valerii Laevini

Valerii Flacci

Valerii Faltones

Valerii Triarii

Others

Late imperial Rome

Other uses of the name Valerius

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, William Smith, Editor.
  2. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romaike Archaiologia v. 39.
  3. Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, Publicola 20.
  4. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita ii. 31.
  5. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus ii. 23.
  6. Plutarch, Publicola 23.
  7. Niebuhr, History of Rome, vol. i. p. 538.
  8. Dictionary of Antiquities, s. v. Leges Valeriae.
  9. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ii. 46.
  10. Plutarch, Numa 5, Publicola 1.
  11. George Davis Chase, "The Origin of Roman Praenomina", in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 8 (1897).
  12. D.P. Simpson, Cassell's Latin & English Dictionary (1963).
  13. Johann Caspar von Orelli, Inscriptionum Latinarum Selectarum Collectio n. 547.
  14. Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams x. 14.
  15. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis xviii. 3.
  16. Plutarch, Cicero 1.
  17. Marcus Terentius Varro, Rerum Rusticarum libri III i. 2.
  18. Horace, Satirae 1, 6, 12, Schol. Vet.
  19. Martial, Epigrams i. 62, vi. 9.
  20. 1 2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, vi. 12.
  21. Livy, ii. 52, 53, iii. 15-19.
  22. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ix. 28, x. 14-17.
  23. Livy, v. 26, vi. 1, 5, 21, 27.
  24. Livy, vii. 12, 17-19.
  25. Livy, vii. 21, 23, 28.
  26. Livy, viii. 17.
  27. Livy, iv. 49, 57, 61.
  28. Livy, iv. 49, 58, v. 1, 10, 14, 31, 48.
  29. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, i. 74.
  30. Livy, vi. 6, 18, 27, 32, 36, 42.
  31. Livy, vi. 36.
  32. 1 2 Livy, viii. 18.
  33. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, vi. 39-45.
  34. Livy, ii. 30, 31.
  35. Cicero, Brutus 14.
  36. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, x. 31-33.
  37. Livy, iii. 31.
  38. Livy, v. 14, 24.
  39. Livy, ix. 29, 40, 41, 43.
  40. 1 2 3 Fasti Capitolini.
  41. Pliny the Elder, xvi. 10.
  42. Joannes Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum viii. 19.
  43. Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII iv. 13.
  44. Livy, xxvii. 5, xxxiv 54, 55, xxxviii. 35, 42, xli. 22, xlii. 28.
  45. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae ii. 24, xv. 11.
  46. Suetonius, De Claris Rhetoribus i.
  47. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium libri IX ii. 9. § 9.
  48. Appian, Bellum Civile i. 40.
  49. Tacitus, Annales iii. 68.
  50. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De Ira ii. 5.
  51. Cassius Dio, Roman History lxxvii. 5.
  52. Livy, xxxi. 50, xli. 8.
  53. Livy, ix. 7.
  54. Polybius, The Histories i. 20.
  55. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae iv. 3.
  56. Livy, xxi. 6, xxiii. 16, 34, 38, xxvi. 8 Epitome 20.
  57. Cicero, Philippicae v. 10.
  58. Livy, xxvii. 8, xxxi. 50, xxxii. 7.
  59. Livy, xxxvii. 46.
  60. Julius Obsequens, Liber de Prodigiis 77.
  61. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares iii. 4, 11.
  62. Cicero, Pro Flacco 36; De Oratore 38.
  63. Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Civili iii. 53.
  64. Cicero, De Divinatione i. 46.
  65. Varro, De Lingua Latina libri XXV vi. 21.
  66. Eckhel, Doctrina Numorum Veterum vol. v. p. 333.
  67. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares ix. 21.
  68. Livy, Epitome xix.
  69. Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium i. 1. § 2, ii. 8. § 2.
  70. Zonaras, Epitome Historiarum viii. 18.
  71. Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII iv. 12.
  72. Livy, xxix. 11, xxx. 40, 41.
  73. Appian, Bella Mithridatica 88, 89, 112, 120.
  74. Plutarch, Pompeius 35.
  75. Cassius Dio, Roman History xxxv. 10-12.
  76. Cicero, De Leg. Man. 9.
  77. Livy, Epitome 98.
  78. Pliny the Elder, vi. 3.
  79. Asconius Pedianus, in Scauro p. 19.
  80. Cicero, Pro Scauro 1, 2; Epistulae ad Atticum iv. 16. § 8, iv. 17. § 2; Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem iii. 2. § 3.
  81. Julius Caesar, de Bello Civili iii. 5, 92.
  82. Cicero, Brutus 76; Epistulae ad Atticum xii. 28, § 3.
  83. Pliny the Elder, xxxvi. 15. s. 24.
  84. Livy, xxxv. 10, 20, xxxvii. 46.
  85. Livy, xxxviii. 36.
  86. Karl Julius Sillig, Catalogus Artificium (1827), Append. s.v. Artema.
  87. 1 2 3 Desiré-Raoul Rochette, Lettre à M. Schorn, p. 422, 2nd ed.
  88. Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Novus Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptionum, Milan (1739-42), vol. i. p. xii. 12, p. xiv. 6.
  89. Muratori, Novus Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptionum, vol. ii. p. cmlxxxi. 9.
  90. Gellius, Noctes Atticae xix. 9.
  91. Latin Anthology, iii. 242, 243, ed. Burmann, or Nos. 27, 28, ed. Meyer.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "article name needed". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, April 24, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.